Word: ahmad
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...wrote his new novel, Updike noticed similarities between how the Christian protagonist David in his early short story “Pigeon Feathers” and Ahmad in “Terrorist” become skeptical of leaders in their respective faiths. Both young men are concerned about whether their mentors believe in the Scripture that they profess...
...worry about. It was young men allied to the Taliban?s arch-foes - the heroes of the Northern Alliance who ousted the ultra-Islamic regime - that were major agitators in the Kabul violence. Many of the demonstrators were carrying portraits of ethnic Tajik Afghan resistance hero Ahmad Shah Massoud, assassinated by the Taliban a day before the September 11 attacks...
With his 22nd novel, Terrorist (Knopf; 320 pages), Updike answers his own question. Terrorist is the startlingly contemporary story of Ahmad, a high school student in a crumbling New Jersey town whose zealous Islamic faith and disaffection with modern life make him a pawn in the larger, fitfully violent conflict between Muslim and Christian, East and West. They also make him a powerful voice for Updike's abiding, ongoing critique of American civilization, as well as a uniquely tragic individual in his own right...
...MANAGE TO MAKE A REAL CONNECTION WITH AHMAD, A YOUNG MAN WITH WHOM YOU DON'T OBVIOUSLY HAVE A LOT IN COMMON. I got very much into him and liked him, sympathized with him, even admired him. He's in some ways like me as I remember myself. But he's more pious and more cool, more composed. Not this disheveled, eager-to-please, puppyish adolescent, which is my image of myself. He's not so puppyish. He has a deadly streak...
...AHMAD'S DISGUST WITH WESTERN CIVILIZATION MAPS NEATLY--NOT TOO NEATLY BUT MORE NEATLY THAN YOU'D EXPECT--ONTO THE CRITIQUE OF LATE 20TH CENTURY AMERICA THAT WE SAW IN THE RABBIT BOOKS: THE DISGUST WITH JUNK FOOD AND OBESITY AND POP CULTURE. And waste, the American waste. I find myself very disturbed lately by the fact that restaurants give you more than any sane person would want to eat, and food is packaged in bigger and bigger containers now so that you try to buy a mere quart of ginger ale and you have to buy a gallon...